FEAR, REVERENCE,

TERROR

THE ITALIAN LIST

 Carlo Ginzburg
Fear, Reverence,Terror
FIVE ESSAYS
IN POLITICAL ICONOGRAPHY

CALCUT TA LONDON NEW YORK

 SERIES EDITOR: ALBERTO TOSCANO

Seagull Books, 2017

Texts © Carlo Ginzburg

This compilation © Seagull Books, 2017

ISBN 978 0 8574 2 335 1

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Designed by Sunandini Banerjee, Seagull Books, Calcutta, India

Printed and bound by Hyam Enterprises, Calcutta, India
 Contents

vii
Preface

xvii
A Note on the Texts

1
I. Memory and Distance:
On a Gilded Silver Vase (Antwerp, c.1530)

40
II. Reading Hobbes Today

77
III. David, Marat:
Art Politics Religion

117
IV. ‘Your Country Needs You’

165
V. The Sword and the Lightbulb:
A Reading of Guernica

243
List of Illustrations
 Preface

1. The essays, or experiments, collected here deal with themes that differ
greatly among themselves, although they are connected to the political
iconography mentioned in the subtitle. Less obvious is the analytical
instrument they have in common—the notion of Pathosformeln (formulae
of pathos) suggested by Aby Warburg more than a century ago. I shall say
something about its significance and origins before alluding to the some-
what different use I have made of it here.

2. Warburg, in a lecture he gave at Hamburg in October 1905, juxtaposed a

Dürer drawing representing the death of Orpheus with an engraving on the
same subject from the circle of Mantegna. The drawing was inspired by the
engraving but as Warburg observed, the latter—through intermediaries that
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CARLO GINZBURG

are no longer apparent—echoed, in the gesture of Orpheus being put to

death, a gesture that one still finds on Greek vases: ‘an archaeologically
authentic formula of pathos [Pathosformel]’.1 For Warburg this was not an
isolated case: the art of the early Renaissance had recovered from antiquity
‘the models of an intensified pathetic manner of gesturing’, ignored by the
classicist vision that identified the art of the ancients with ‘quiet grandeur’.
In this stylistic-iconographic interpretation of the death of Orpheus,
Warburg (as he noted some months later in his diary), hearkened back to
Nietzsche, so as to supplement (and correct) Winckelmann.2 Next to
Nietzsche, Burckhardt: the Renaissance (as Fritz Saxl observed with the
help of Warburg’s notes), had recovered, especially through sarcophagi,
the gestures of orgiastic paganism that the pious Middle Ages had tacitly
censored.3 It is precisely in a passage from Burckhardt’s The Civilization of
the Renaissance in Italy—‘Whenever Pathos emerged, it took an ancient
form’—that Gombrich recognized the germ of the idea of Warburg’s
Pathosformel.4 Perhaps, but that seed fell on ground made fertile by other
experiences.

3. In his published essays, Warburg made scant use of the notion of Pathos-
formeln. But he turned to it almost obsessively in the endless mass of notes
which he accumulated over the years. Taking inspiration from the research
of the linguist Hermann Osthoff on the primitive character of superlatives,
Warburg compared representations of specific gestures—which could be
cited as formulas—to verbal superlatives, in other words, to ‘primordial
words of impassioned gesticulation’ (Urworte leidenschaftlicher Gebärden-
sprache).5 Among the characteristics of these ‘primordial words’ was,
 ix

PREFACE

according to Osthoff, ambivalence—an element that Warburg extended

to the Pathosformeln.6 Emotional gestures taken from the ancients entered
Renaissance art but with an inverted meaning. An example of this ‘ener-
getic inversion’ (Warburg’s term) is the Mary Magdalene represented as a
maenad in the Crucifixion by Bertoldo di Giovanni, the Florentine sculptor
who was a student of Donatello; an image that recurs twice, in its entirety
and as a detail, in the atlas Mnemosyne, on which Warburg was working at
the end of his life.7
After the death of Warburg, Edgar Wind, who had been a member of
his circle, returned to Bertoldo di Giovanni’s Mary Magdalene in a brief
essay entitled ‘The Maenad under the Cross’. It began with a reference to
Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses on Art. Commenting on a drawing by Baccio
Bandinelli which he owned, Reynolds noted that the artist had taken his
inspiration from a Bacchante ‘intended to express an enthusiastic frantick
kind of joy’ in order to represent a Mary beneath the cross which
‘express[ed] frantick agony of grief ’. And he concluded: ‘It is curious to
observe, and it is certainly true, that the extremes of contrary passions are
with very little variation expressed by the same action’. Wind noted that
Warburg ‘without knowing of this passage in Reynolds’ Discourses . . . col-
lected material which tended to show that similar gestures can assume
opposite meanings’.8
On this last point Wind erred. Warburg came to know about the pas-
sage in Reynolds in a way that helps us to better understand the genesis of
the notion of Pathosformeln.
 x

CARLO GINZBURG

4. We should say straight away that the connection is absolutely obvious.

In 1888, while he was preparing a seminar for August Schmarsow, the 22-
year-old Warburg stumbled upon the famous book by Charles Darwin, The
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, in Florence’s National
Library.9 In his diary Warburg noted: ‘At last a book which helps me.’10 That
this ‘utility’ concerned the notion of Pathosformeln has been frequently
noted, but in vague terms: ‘it remains to be understood’, it has been said,
‘in what sense this influence should be interpreted’.11 Perhaps. But any
interpretation will have to consider a fact that has strangely been ignored
by students of Warburg: that Darwin, in the chapter dedicated to contigu-
ity between extreme emotive states— such as spasmodic laughter and cry-
ing—had cited in a note the abovementioned passage from Reynolds (‘It is
curious to observe . . .’), and commented: ‘He [Reynolds] gives as an
instance the frantic joy of a Bacchante and the grief of a Mary Magdalen.’12
Those five lines from Darwin sparked in Warburg’s mind a reflection
that lasted 40 years. It is tempting to see in them, in nuce, the notion of ‘for-
mulae of pathos’ (Pathosformeln) and what it implies: on the one hand, the
relationship with antiquity; on the other, the ‘energetic inversion’ that
transforms the ecstatic frenzy of the Bacchante into the sorrowful frenzy
of Mary Magdalene. But this is a retrospective illusion—the seed does not
explain the tree. Significantly, Warburg waited almost 20 years before pub-
licly proposing the notion of Pathosformeln.

5. This hesitation might have stemmed from a difficulty that Warburg

never succeeded in truly resolving. If the expressions of emotions—as
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PREFACE

Darwin suggested in the very title of his book—can be explained through

evolution, the search for specific cultural mediators becomes superfluous.
But it was precisely these mediators, certain or presumed, which were
instead at the heart of Warburg’s Hamburg lecture on ‘Dürer and Antiquity’
(1905). In the introduction to the atlas Mnemosyne written shortly before
his death (1929), Warburg spoke instead of ‘engrams of an impassioned
experience which survive as a hereditary patrimony inscribed in memory’.13
In the span of a quarter century, Warburg’s thinking had oscillated between
two opposed directions. The richness of his work, published and unpub-
lished, arises precisely here—from the unresolved tension between the his-
torian and the morphologist, which can be summed up in the contrast
between the diagram that condenses the sensational deciphering of the
Schifanoia frescoes and the images juxtaposed, by way of contiguity and
dissonance, in the panels of Mnemosyne.14

6. The tension between morphology and history that criss-crosses War-

burg’s work has objective roots. The transmission of the Pathosformeln
depends on historical events; human reactions to those formulas depend
on totally different contingencies, in which the more or less brief times of
history are interwoven with the much lengthier ones of evolution. The
manner of this interweaving leads us to an area of research that remains
largely unexplored. The essays collected here will hopefully make a small
contribution to this end.
In the first, the analysis of the gilded silver vase in the Schatzkammer
(treasure chamber) of the Munich Residenz demonstrates the ambiguous
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CARLO GINZBURG

role played by the antiquity-inspired Pathosformeln in representing a new

and overwhelming reality: the conquest of the New World. In the second
essay, the identification of the term awe, which joins terror and veneration
as a central element in the thought of Hobbes, clarifies a decisive chapter
in a long history that hinges on the expression of extreme and ambivalent
emotions. Terror and veneration are at the heart of the third essay, dedi-
cated to Jacques-Louis David’s Marat—its recovery, in the service of revo-
lutionary iconography, of gestures from an iconography that is first pagan
and then Christian perfectly illustrates the ambiguities of secularization.
The same theme is present, implicitly, in the fourth contribution—the
premises, both distant and near, of Lord Kitchener’s gesture help us to
understand its tremendous efficacy. And in the last essay, an analysis of
Picasso’s violent juxtaposition of ancient and contemporary, broken sword
and light bulb, casts unexpected light on Guernica. We have returned to ter-
ror and its gestures, a theme that is at the very heart of these essays devoted
to political iconography.

7. The notion of Pathosformeln brings to light the ancient origins of modern

images and the manner in which those origins have been reworked. But
the analytical instrument that Warburg gave us can be extended to
phenomena very different from those for which it had originally been
developed. The title page of Leviathan—that illustrious example of political
iconography—translates into a new image the words of Tacitus: fingunt
simul creduntque (they believe what they have just made up). Here we find
ourselves confronted not by an emotion but by an idea, a Logosformel which
 xiii

PREFACE

has an emotion as its object—we are subjugated by falsehoods of our own

creation. In its disarming, paradoxical simplicity, this idea can help us to
develop a critique of the languages of politics, and of its images.

Translated by Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi

 xiv

Notes
1 Aby Warburg, ‘Dürer und die italienische Antike’ in Ausgewãhlte Schriften und
Würdigungen, 2nd edn (Dieter Wuttke ed.) (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1980), pp. 125–
35, especially p. 126. English translation: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contri-
butions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance (Kurt W. Forster introd.,
David Britt trans.) (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1999), p. 555—trans-
lation modified. See now also Die entfesselte Antike. Aby Warburg und die Geburt
der Pathosformel (Marcus Andrew Hurttig and Thomas Ketelsen eds) (Cologne:
Walter König, 2012), with essays by Ulrich Rehm and Claudia Wedepohl.
2 Ernst H. Gombrich, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (London: Warburg
Institute, 1970), p. 185n1.
3 Fritz Saxl, ‘Die Ausdrucksgebãrden der bildenden Kunst’ (1932) in Warburg,
Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen, pp. 419–31, especially p. 429 (Saxl used
Warburg’s notes).
4 Ernst H. Gombrich, Aby Warburg, p. 179n1 (‘“Wo irgend Pathos zum Vorschein
kam, musste es in antiker Form geschehen” [Where some kind of pathos appeared,
it had to present itself in an ancient form]—quoted in K. H. von Stein, Vor-
lesungen über Aesthetik (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1897), p. 77. This is the germinal idea
of Warburg’s Pathosformel’). Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance
in Italy (Peter Burke introd., S. G. C. Middlemore trans.) (London: Penguin,
1990), p. 127—translation modified.
5 Saxl, ‘Die Ausdrucksgebãrden’, p. 429n1; Gombrich, Aby Warburg, pp. 178–9,
from notes taken between 1903–1906, based on Hermann Osthoff, Vom Supple-
tivwesen der indogermanischen Sprachen. Akademische Rede (Heidelberg: Hörning,
1899).
6 Moshe Barasch, ‘“Pathos Formulae”: Some Reflections on the Structure of a
Concept’ in Imago Hominis. Studies in the Language of Art (New York: New York
University Press, 1994), pp. 119–27, who uses the term ‘ambiguity’. See Gom-
 xv

NOTES

brich, Aby Warburg, analytical index, under ‘Polarity’; Georges Didi-Huber-

man, L’image survivante. Histoire de l’art et temps des fantômes selon Aby Warburg
(Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 2002), pp. 190–270.
7 Aby Warburg, Der Bilderatlas. Mnemosyne (Martin Warnke ed., in collaboration
with Claudia Brink) (Berlin: Akademie, 2000), Plate 25 on pp. 42–3; a neo-Attic
relief, today housed in the Prado National Museum in Madrid, representing a
dancing Maenad, is juxtaposed to Mary Magdalene in Bertoldo di Giovanni’s
Crucifixion. See also Plate 42 on pp. 76–7, accompanied by the caption: ‘Leiden-
pathos in energetischer Inversion (Pentheus, Mänade am Kreuz). Bürgerliche Toten-
klage, heroisiert. Kirchl. Totenklage. Tod des Erlösers . . . Grablegung. Todesmeditation’
[Pathos of suffering in energetic inversion. (Pentheus, Maenad on the cross).
Bourgeois death-lament, heroised. Ecclesiastic/clerical death-lament. Death
of the savior . . . Entombment. Death-meditation] (here we also have the entire
image of Bertoldo di Giovanni’s Crucifixion). See also Aby Warburg, Tagebuch
der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken Warburg, mit Eintrãgen von Gertrud Bing
und Fritz Saxl (Karen Michels and Charlotte Schoell-Glass eds) (Berlin:
Akademie, 2001), p. 320.
8 Edgar Wind, ‘The Maenad under the Cross: Comments on an Observation by
Reynolds’ in Hume and the Heroic Portrait. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Imagery
(J. Anderson ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 74, 76 (originally
published as ‘Comments on an Observation by Reynolds’, Journal of the Warburg
Institute 1(1) [July 1937]: 70–1). The reference to Reynolds is called ‘significant’
by Forster in Kurt W. Forster and Katia Mazzucco, Introduzione ad Aby Warburg
e all’Atlante della Memoria (Monica Centanni ed.) (Milan: Bruno Mondadori,
2002), p. 28.
9 Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London:
John Murray, 1872) (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale: MAGL. 19.8.445).
The National Library in Florence also holds a copy of the French translation:
L’expression des émotions chez l’homme et les animaux (Samuel Pozzi and René
 xvi

NOTES

Benoit trans.) (Paris: Reinwald, 1874) (MAGL. 19.8. 435). Cf. Charles Darwin, L’e-
spressione delle emozioni nell’uomo e negli animali, 3rd edn (Paul Ekman ed., with
an essay on the illustrations by Philip Prodger) (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri,
1999).
10 Gombrich, Aby Warburg, p. 72, where the title is cited incorrectly as The Expres-
sion of Emotion in Animals and Men.
11 Didi-Huberman, L’image survivante, p. 232. This question is followed by an
attempt at a reply, rich in useful observations (pp. 224–40, 242–6). The decisive
importance of Darwin for Warburg’s theory of expression had already been
pointed out by Gombrich (Aby Warburg, p. 242).
12 Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 2nd edn
(Francis Darwin ed.) (London: John Murray, 1904), p. 214n17 (in the 1872 edition
consulted by Warburg, the passage is at p. 208n15). See also Darwin and Facial
Expression: A Century of Research in Review (Paul Ekman ed.) (New York-London:
Academic Press, 1973). In Wind’s comment concerning the passage from
Reynolds (‘a fundamental law of human expression’—‘The Maenad under the
Cross’, p.74) one is tempted to read an unconscious allusion to the title of
Darwin’s book.
13 Didi-Huberman, L’image survivante, p. 240. This tension does not appear in
Didi-Huberman’s book, which pays scant attention to Warburg the historian.
But the reconstruction of the ‘theoretical’ Warburg is impaired by the polemic
against the ‘haine positiviste de toute “théorie”’ [positivist hatred of any ‘theory’]
(p. 93). Warburg’s ideas obviously originate from positivism even if they go
beyond it (just as in Freud’s case for that matter, but the comparison between
the two, belaboured by Didi-Huberman, is not very illuminating).
14 On this antithesis and its implications, see Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Family Resem-
blances and Family Trees: Two Cognitive Metaphors’, Critical Inquiry 30(3)
(2004): 537–56.
 A Note on the Texts

Compared to the French version of this book (Peur révérence terreur. Quatre
essais d’iconographie politique [Paris: Les presses du réel, 2013]), the essays
have now become five: a new one, the first, has been added, which had
already been included in the Mexican edition (Miedo, reverencia, terror. Cinco
ensayos de iconografía politica [México: Editorial Contrahistorias, 2014]). For
an expanded version of the preface, see ‘Le forbici di Warburg’ in Maria
Luisa Catoni, Carlo Ginzburg, Luca Giuliani, Salvatore Settis, Tre figure.
Achille, Meleagro, Cristo (Maria Luisa Catoni ed.) (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2013),
pp. 109–32.
I note below where and when the writings collected in this book (all
more or less revised) first appeared:
I ‘Memory and Distance: Learning from a Gilded Silver Vase (Antwerp,
c.1530), Diogenes LI(201) (2004): 99–112.
 xviii

CARLO GINZBURG

II Fear Reverence Terror: Reading Hobbes Today (Max Weber Lecture Series)
(Badia Fiesolana, S. Domenico di Fiesole [Florence]: European Univer-
sity Institute, 2008).
III ‘David, Marat. Arte politica religione’ in Prospettiva Zeri (Anna Ottani
Cavina ed.) (Turin: Allemandi, 2009), pp. 67–84.
IV ‘ “Your Country Needs You”: A Case Study in Political Iconography’,
History Workshop Journal 52 (2001): 1–22.
V Das Schwert und die Glühbirne. Eine neue Lektüre von Picassos «Guernica»
(Reinhard Kaiser trans.) (Frankfurt AM: Suhrkamp, 1999); original ver-
sion: ‘The Sword and the Lightbulb: A Reading of Guernica’ in Michael
S. Roth and Charles G. Salas (eds), Disturbing Remains: Memory, History,
and Crisis in the Twentieth Century (Los Angeles: Getty Research Insti-
tute, 2001), pp. 111–77.

I am deeply grateful to Francesca Savastano for her work on the Italian

version of this book. Her sharp, demanding eye helped me to correct over-
sights and inaccuracies.
My friends Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi translated into Eng-
lish, with unfailing competence, the preface and third chapter, as well as
some additions and corrections I prepared for this edition. For further cor-
rections I am indebted to the learning and generosity of Alberto Toscano.
Many thanks to them all.